Thoughts on the Roof

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Monday, January 29, 2018

We are wasting our effort, dissipating our effectiveness and ensuring failure. I refer to our various disparate campaigns. Save the flowers, save the bees, save the snails, save the trees. We could go on and on with mitigating climate change, rewilding, stopping all sorts of pollution, getting control of trade agreements that shaft us, stopping subsidies to fossil fuel companies and on and on it goes. There is one ring that controls them all.

Nowhere is that old adage "Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune" more true. We, the peasants, think we are gaining some advantage by others paying for the election campaigns of our elected officials and then we wonder why the elected officials do the bidding of the vested interests. What a great investment for them.

They pay pennies and get back dollars, pay millions and get back billions. For big business this has to be one of the best investments they will ever make. They support politicians, often on both sides, just to hedge their bets and the politicians make sure that the legislation is in favor of big business and ensure that they get tax breaks and subsidies.

This is costing us hugely in our day to day life and it is now clear that this system could bring down our civilization. If even some of the milder scenarios from the scientists are correct with respect to the effects of climate change, we could be knocked back into the dark ages or even the stone age*

* The fringe scientists suggest we could trigger a run away green house effect that would turn us into a new Venus.

If, for instance, some of the predicted tipping points are reached, climate could change faster than our very precariously balanced agriculture could cope with. Even a single year of crop failure in the grain belts of the Northern Hemisphere would be disastrous. Imagine a decade of such crop failure until we work out how to grow crops under the new climate regime.

Or even more disastrous, it is a real possibility that our climate will flick flack back and forth between the existing and the new regime before it settles down. This would be even more serious than a sudden change to a new climate.

We have seen, in the 1930's and again, even more so, in 2008 how interconnected the world is. Back many centuries ago, if Europe crashed, America didn't even know Europe existed. Now one country going down economically brings all down. How much more disastrous would it be if our food supply suddenly crashed. America, Canada and Russia provide most of the grain to a wide range of third world countries.

The present refugee problem is just a tiny fore-taste of what would face us if climate change begins to get really serious. Not to mention world wide famine.

So what is the bottom line. If we want politicians to do what is best for us, the people, we must be the ones that pay for their election campaigns and the first order of business after this is achieved is to pass legislation that anyone who pays money to politicians gets mandatory jail time. Campaign money must come from the exchequer.

And it doesn't have to cost the ridiculous amounts that it costs now. Politicians can be given a legislated amount of money and a legislated time on national radio and television. They would get a legislated amount of money for space on news papers . Venues would be rented for them to hold town meetings where each candidate answers questions from each other, from the moderator and from the audience. We should also set up a standard web site for each of them

On their individual, standardized web site, they can express themselves as they please but there will also be a section in which past promises are compared with their voting record and a section comparing their voting record with any other politician one is interested in. Of course, they can use the Internet to their hearts content. It costs nothing.

If we want to call the tune, we have to pay the piper. We should stop all our campaigns for various causes and concentrate a huge ground swell on this one alone. Then all our other aims will be so much easier to achieve. We are so smart individually but so dumb in the collective. How hard is it to understand.Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

Saturday, January 20, 2018

When I was a young fellow, some 60 years ago, there was a sovereign cure for the trots (diarrhea). It was called Kao-pectin. As the name suggests it was a suspension of fine clay in a solution of pectin. It was mildly distasteful to swallow but, man, did it work. After a few one table spoon doses taken about an hour apart, you could once more trust a fart. I can only speculate how it works.

Clay is made of fine platelates and a small amount of clay has a huge surface area. It apparently adsorbed the nasties in the GI* track and firmed up the contents so that peristalsis could move them down stream to be eliminated.

Also, I only have a sample of one. Myself. The stuff was a miracle. Can I buy it now in my local pharmacy. Not on your nelly. At least in New Zealand, the UK or Canada, the pharmacies I have tried don't stock it. Why not. It is still produced in some other countries so it is available.

I suspect that there is not enough profit in it. After all, how much can you charge for a suspension of clay in a solution of Pectin. When I was young, I watched the evolution of this product.

First the made the new improved Kao. They added a bit of flavoring and some colour. Judging by the colour, it was probably Tartrazine, not something you want in a medicine. Whatever was added, the Pharm industry could now charge more. It still worked so not too much harm done except perhaps for someone at the bottom of the earning ladder with sick kids.

Next they added some sort of medicine to it. I seem to remember that it was an anti-biotic of some sort. It wasn't needed. The original formulation worked a treat but now they could charge even more.

Finally, the product was discontinued. Still not enough profit??

There is no denying that we get valuable, effective cures for various conditions from the pharmacies but they have the morals of a cigarette salesman. If their isn't enough profit or if it will detract us from buying a more expensive product, they ain't going to carry it.

I'd like to see some double blind testing done on simple Kao-pectin against other products to see just how effective it is and then, if it proves to be as good as I say it is, to publicize it widely. Can't be done in a university. They can't endanger their funding from the Pharm industry. It would have to be an independent research outfit that isn't in thral to the pharm industry. What we need is a government research branch for research that can't be funded by vested interests.

We
are having a debate in New Zealand for and against irrigation. It
really boils down to a debate on our national dairy herd. With
irrigation, you can put cows on land that otherwise would not support
them. Our dairy herd can then increases and with it the pollution of
our environment.

True, there are some concerns about
the irrigation itself but the main concern is that it allows the increase in our national dairy herd and with it increased pollution.

To
come
out for or against irrigation may be good for radio sound bites
but as with most cases in the affairs of man, the devil is in the
details.Clearly we need irrigation for our farmers to fill in the gaps
left by nature. Even in the best areas, there are periods without rain.
A farmer needs reliable inputs to be able to run his business.

On the other hand, equally
clearly, if we can not find ways of farming that preserve our
environment then the crude sledge hammer method of reducing herds and
restricting where they can graze must be taken. The question is;

Can we have dairy herds and not pollute.

The answer may be yes for some areas and no for others and will depend, to quite a large extent, on the details of how we farm.

The
core of the problem
is to be able to apply the waste output of the cows back on to the
land
a) in a way, b) in a concentration and c) at the right time such that
it
constitutes a valuable fertilizer, is taken up by the pasture plants, and hence is not an environmental pollutant. If
this can be done, dairying is no longer a source of pollution.

Throughout history, societies that trashed their soils, declined and disappeared.
One factor in trashing soils is not returning nutrients to the soil
that are extracted. And....in so far as is possible, nutrients must be returned in an organic form that benefits
the soil organisms. Quite clearly, the urine, manure and spilt milk from a dairy
herd constitutes a valuable resource for the enhancement of the soil.

That
is not to say that chemical fertilizer should not be used but as you
will see, much less of them can be used if farming methods are tweaked.

If farming remains a process of plow, add chemical nutrients, sow the seeds
and irrigate then our soils will degrade, wash to the sea, pollution will be rampant and we will go the way of many previous societies that mined their soils instead of farming them.

It
takes a lot more 'smarts' to farm in a way that improves the soil,
reduces inputs, increased water infiltration,
and leaves you with a much better farm to pass on to your children or to
sell at retirement than when you started. What is not generally realized is that you can do this while improving your bottom line and your resilience to weather and price fluctuations.

Let's look at some of the tools we have available.

Riparian Zones

Fencing off
streams and encouraging the growth of trees, shrubs and grasses between
the fence and the stream is a great help. Not only does it stop the
cows from entering the stream and urinating and defecating into it but
the roots of the vegetation of the riparian zone take nutrients from the
water table which is slowly flowing toward the stream.

However, it has
been reported that 70% of the nutrients entering the streams comes from
the very small feeder streams and ditches. It is simply not possible to fence off every little feeder
stream. We need some other measures in the pasture.

Composting Barns

Composting barns use
deep
layers of wood shavings or coarse saw dust as bedding and the cows are
allowed (not forced) to bed down there at night. They also have free access to the barn
to escape inclement
weather. The bedding is stirred mechanically every day, keeping it
aerobic. It has been found that cows prefer such an environment to bed
down in, even choosing it ahead of a straw-lined byre. The composting
process produces heat which reduces the feed needed by the cows and a
rich
compost eats up pathogens. The compost captures all the nutrients from
the waste of the cows including N and S which in an anaerobic system go
off as the gases NH3 and H2S.

The
bedding can be applied to the fields at the
correct concentration and correct time which most benefits the soil and
the pasture plants and hence causes no pollution. Some research needs
to be done
on what portion of the effluent of a cow is released while in such a
barn compared to what proportion is released out on the pasture*. Do
they mainly urinate and defecate at night or in the day,,,, while they are
grazing or when they are chewing their cud. this would give an
indication of how much of the nutrient stream can be captured by a
composting barn.

*Great job for some long suffering masters student

Bio-Gas Generators.

At long last
a farm in Southern New Zealand is using the waste produced in the
milking shed* to generate bio-gas. The biogas is use to produce
electricity. The
waste heat from the motor which drives the generator is used to heat the
water used in the milking
shed. This combination, utilizing the waste heat from the motor that
powers the generator, makes for a very efficient system, energy wise.
The effluent from the biogas generator contains almost all the
nutrients in the waste stream since mainly C and H have been taken off
as biogas
(and some of the S). As with compost-bedding the effluent remaining after extracting the biogas, can be applied to the
fields when and in what
concentrations most benefits the pasture and hence least pollutes the
environment. Excess electricity is sent to the grid for an added income stream and/or excess biogas can be used in the house and farm.

*More work for that long suffering student.

Managing the Pasture

We
have now
removed a portion of the waste stream with a)Riparian zones, b)
compositing
barns and c)biogas generators. Let's see what we can do out on the
pasture. There is a fantastic book by David R Montgomery called Growing A Revolution; Bringing back our soils. In it he describes visiting
farmers all over the world who have independently come up with a way of
farming. The methods they use would be familiar to any farmer before
the advent of cheap chemical fertilizers but each method is updated in
light of modern knowledge. Farming this way results in an improved
bottom line, slashed pollution to the environment, reduced farming
costs, increased infiltration of rain, continually improving soils and as a bonus sequesters significant
amounts of carbon in the soils.

It has become to be known as Conservation Agriculture.

It also, due
to the greatly increased organic content of the soil, results in the
capture of
much of the Nitrogen when a cow urinates. The urine is soaked up by the
organic material giving the soil organisms time to scavenge the
nitrogen.

Of course, it also results in the sequestration of considerable carbon in the soil.

Before we go off half cocked and reduce one
of our most valuable industries, we must pay attention to the details.
Farming can not be allowed to degrade our environment but there are
farming methods which address this problem. What is great is that these
methods can improve the bottom line of the farmer and his resilience to weather and fluctuating prices for his products while at the same time making him the darling of the greens. The devil is in the
detail.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

There is a 'new' sort of agriculture practiced by a handful of farmers in diverse locations around the world. Conservation Agriculture is not a descriptor although the words describe to some extent what it is. It is, rather, a name given to a suit of farming methods which taken together are called Conservation Agriculture.

This so called Conservation Agriculture involves a) not ploughing the soil, (and hence, direct drilling) b) rotating crops in a random fashion, with longer periods between growing the same crop, c) leaving all the unused parts (stems, leaves and, of course roots) of the past crop on the land as a mulch and d) the planting of cover crops between commercial crops. It is not absolutely against using chemical fertilizers but results in great reduction or even elimination of the use of such chemicals. In addition it may involve grazing down the standing crop residue and/or cover crops, and thus converting them into dung and urine. If grazing is used, it is very intense, very infrequently. It may also involve, the incorporation of char into the soil. To find more detail on the methods go to this site or to get a historical perspective on the fate of societies that didn't preserve their soils, to this site. What I would like to explore in this blog is the logic behind the methods.

Let's take a corn plant as an example. The seed grows into a plant and the plant uses water, carbon dioxide and various minerals to build it's roots, stems, leaves, and seeds (the corn we eat). The energy to transform these simple, low energy substances into complex, high energy compounds comes from the sun and this captured energy is now in the form of chemical energy. The resulting chemicals (largely cellulose along with many other compounds in lesser amounts) can be burnt as a fuel but can also be 'burnt' by soil organisms just as we 'burn' the corn in our bodies for energy. The soil organisms incorporate some of this stover into the substance of their bodies, especially proteins and vitamins just as we do with the corn seeds.

Saprophytes (funguses) are specialist in using dead plant material for their sustenance. Think of the fungus growing on dead wood in moist conditions. But these are the fruiting bodies of the fungus. Most of the fungus consists of thin filaments (mycelia) that extend through the media and collect nutrients. Of particular importance in-so-far as we are talking about soil health for crop production is that the funguses not only use dead organic material for energy but can also mobilise minerals in the soil that are in insoluble, mineral form and make them available to plants. Many of the funguses grow their mycellia inside or around root hairs and exchange the nutrients they have mobilized for energy rich compounds that the plant provides. Anything to encourage the growth of these funguses and to avoid disrupting the mycellia that extend throughout the soil is good for the crop. Therefore we put lots of organic material on the soil where the fungus can access it and we do not plough

The obvious question is why don't we mix this material into the soil. Firstly, this would involve ploughing and hence the disruption of the mycellia of the funguses but there is another reason. If there is a large amount of reduced carbon (cellulose and other compounds) in the soil, the micro-organisms that produce cellulase* and hence can access this source of carbon and energy, will scavenge all the available soluable nutrients from the soil to build their bodies. The funguses are not the only organisms that can utilise cellulose. Many single cell soil organisms have the same ability. If a considerable amount of cellulose is incorporated into the soil, there will be nothing available for the growth of the crop you have planted. Put the organic material on the surface and it is gradually incorporated into the soil and nutrients are still available for the crop. But the surface layer of mulch has other benefits.

* The enzyme that can break down cellulose.

The surface mulch shades the soil and keeps it from heating up so much. The soil looses less water by evaporation, leaving more for the crop. The mulch softens the blow of the rain and slows the flow across the ground and hence avoids sealing the surface of the soil and increases infiltration. Again more water for the crop.

A word here about trophic levels. As a first approximation, only ten percent of the material consumed is fixed into the next trophic level. 10 tons of algae will make one ton of krill and one ton of krill will make a tenth of a ton of whale. Sounds good since the 90% excreted is mineralized. Some of it is in a form that can be taken up by plants, but here is the rub. If there is lots of cellulose around, the micro-organisms which can break down cellulose will use the cellulose as energy and scavenge all the mineralised material, which has been released by other organisms, leaving none for the plants. Of course as the quantity of remaining cellulose decreases, more and more of the mineralised nutrients will be available for the plants.

So, the next thing is why do we plant a cover crop when the main crop has been harvested. First we capture more sun energy in the form of the chemical energy of the cover crop and hence produce more organic carbon for the soil organisms. Secondly we scavenge any left over soluble nutrients from the soil and turn them into a slow release fertilizer (the bodies of the plants). As this organic material breaks down it releases its nutrients into the soil over time.

If we include a deep and a shallow rooter, we scavenge nutrients throughout the depth of the soil as well as spreading roots through the soil which will not only disintegrate over time but will provide passages for water and air to penetrate the soil.

If we include a legume that is either inoculated with the appropriate rhyzobium bacteria or finds the correct bacteria in the ground, atmospheric nitrogen will be taken from the air and turned into a nitrogen compound that can be used by the next cash crop. Since most of the nitrogen compounds produced will be incorporated into the leaves, stems and seeds of the legume, it is important that this material be left in the field to enrich the soil.

If we include a root crop such as a radish or turnip, as they later disintegrate, in addition to releasing their nutrients, they create tunnels for water to infiltrate. They also often are deep rooted which will help to scavenge nutrients from lower levels.

It is important to cut down the cover crop or trample or roll it into the surface of the soil before it sets ripe seeds. You don't want the plants of the cover crop to themselves become weeds.

If you decide to graze the cover crop, it is grazed very heavily for only a day or two. This tramples some of the crop into the surface of the soil, ensures that all plants are utilized and not only the favorites, including weeds that you have not planted, and turns the cover crop into urine and manure. This short sharp grazing leaves lots of time for the soil organisms to sort out any surface damage and to incorporate the animal excretement into organic material.

When the cash crop is then planted by direct drilling, it has all the best of the soil structure and soil organisms to support it.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

It has been a bit of a mystery why the floating ice around Antarctica has been increasing in area over the last few decades despite global warming. After quite a bit of research and some reference to some well known physics, there is a pretty plausible theory/story to explain this. It is called the ice pump. First we need a fact or two before we tie it all together.

1. Sea level is rising but only some of this rise is due to the melting of land ice. The remainder is due to the expansion of the water of the oceans as it heats up. The heat is being gradually stirred into deeper and deeper water. The salty deep 'circumpolar water' around the Antarctic is a case in point.

2. H2O expands when it freezes, contracts when it melts. It makes intuitive sense that as you apply pressure to ice, it will melt at a temperature below zero degrees centigrade. Indeed this is observed experimentally. If you have ever skated you have used this phenomenon. the blades of an ice skate are very narrow and apply high pressure to the ice which melts under the blade and allows the skates to slide over the ice.

100MPa equals about 9950m so one interval across the horizontal axis is about 2480m. At this depth the melting point of ice is depressed about 2.4 degrees C. As you can see from the following illustration, the depth of the bottom below sea level in West Antarctica is well below 2000m

3. A few glaciers on East Antarctica and most on West Antarctica are on a retrograde slope. The ice is so heavy that it has depressed the land and the land bottom below the ice gets deeper and deeper as you go inland. In East Antarctica some outflowing glaciers have carved deep channels well below sea level. Most of West Antarctica land is way below sea level.

So let's put all this together.

The deep circumpolar water over-tops the sill at the outlet of some of the glaciers. It is salty which keeps it below the surface, fresher water despite the fact that it is a little warmer.

Being heavier, it flows down the sloping sea bottom under the floating ice until it comes to the grounding line. There it comes into contacts with ice. Not only is it salty and warm but ice melts at below zero under pressure so this salty bottom water melts the ice at the grounding line making the grounding line retreat landward.

The glacier is moving seaward under the pressure of ice from the interior but grounding lines have been observed to be retreating so clearly the melting is faster than the flow of ice seaward.

As the grounding line retreats it is at greater and greater depth and hence at a higher pressure where ice melts at lower and lower temperatures. The melting becomes greater for a given quantity and temperature of circumpolar deep water flowing down the slope.

When you mix the water from the melting ice with this salty deep polar water, the mix is fresher and hence lighter than the deep water. It flows up the slope of the ice ceiling in a sort of up side down river and flows out on to the surface of the ocean. The deep water is often described as seeping under the ice or some such gentle term. We can see that as the light super cooled water flows out on to the surface of the ocean, deep water is being sucked in under the ice. The more water flowing out on the surface the greater the 'suck'.

As the lighter water flows upward into a zone of reduced pressure, it is below the freezing point of ice at that depth. It begins to freeze and for some reason freezes in thin sheets called platelets which form a sort of mushy layer below the sea ice ceiling. This is the ice pump. It is in effect taking ice from the grounding line and depositing it in shallower water under the ice ceiling. The deeper the grounding line, the more effective the pump.

The sea ice around the Antarctic continent disappears every year or two so this ice from the grounding line is lost to the continent. ie contributes to sea level rise.

The water which flows out on to the surface of the ocean, either at the edge of the ice shelf or into a lead is still super cooled and freezes readily, especially as it comes into contact with Arctic air which is well below freezing. Here is one small part of the explanation of the increasing ice around Antarctica. Any leads which open up due to wind and currents, fill rapidly with ice and hence can not close up again if the wind changes.

As the ice is eroded from underneath the glacier, the floating part of the glacier deflates and increases the slope of ice from the interior, seaward. The glacier speeds up, pushing more ice seaward. This is another part of the expansion of the floating ice.

The increased flow of ice seaward should push the grounding line seaward but apparently, at present, melting trumps glacier flow. In addition as the glacier deflates it floats up off the ground. This also contributes to moving the grounding line landward.

There are a couple of further wrinkles to this story.

The rising water flowing up the ice ceiling apparently, in at least some locations, carves out up side down valleys in the ice and the light water collects in these and flows seaward. This will, of course, reduce the surface area where this light up-flowing water is in contact with the surrounding water. It is not quite a pipe but will reduce mixing compared to a sheet flow.

In addition, these valleys have reduced buoyancy compared to the surrounding ice so will weaken the ice shelf, contributing to it's break up. If, for instance, you had one valley running along the middle of an ice shelf, the surrounding ice would have a force on it trying to make the ice tip toward the valley from both sides.

Another factor in the expansion of the surface area of floating ice is that the air flowing off the Antarctic continent is apparently getting stronger and this will tend to push ice outward (North). As mentioned, leads opened up will rapidly freeze, stopping the ice from moving back south.

The winds flowing clockwise (looking down on the continent) around Antarctica are apparently also increasing in velocity. They push on the ice. Anything moving in the southern hemisphere and especially if it is near the pole, is veered to the left by Coriolis. To the left is away from the continent. Again we have ice moving North and leads freezing over, stopping the ice from returning south.

The bottom line of all this is that for a while, we would expect the floating ice to increase in area around the Antarctic due, ultimately, to the warming of the deep salty circumpolar water. At the same time, we should expect to see coastal glacier deflating and the floating ice shelves breaking up. Already two of the Larson Ice shelves along the Arctic peninsula have disintegrated. They are the Northern most Antarctic ice shelves. The third Larson Ice Shelf may be on its way and the rest should follow in time. This will remove the plug and allow inland glaciers to flow more quickly and we will see if this movement can reverse the retreat of the grounding line. This is unlikely as the glacier deflate and float upward.

What is interesting is that we have probably passed a tipping point in the break down of glaciers which are grounded way below sea level. When the salty deep circumpolar water contacts ice at relatively shallow depths, it will erode the ice but the flow of ice seaward may be able to balance the melting. However, when this circumpolar water is contacting ice at greater depth, its erosion ability is greatly increased due to the suppression of the melting temperature of the ice at greater depth and hence pressure. The removed ice is transfered to the underside of the ice shelf at shallower depth and this ice is lost each summer as it floats off into the ocean. Even if the deep circumpolar water cooled to its previous temperature, the depth effect has so increased the ability of this water to melt ice that the process would likely continue. Since there is no prospect that such a cooling will occur, it is doubly likely that the ice sheets which are grounded well below sea level will collapse.

The disintegration of the Antarctic ice which is grounded below sea level is now probably inevitable, even if we were to stop all green house gases tomorrow.